Status of Women Committee on Oct. 28th, 2024

[Anuradha Dugal]

Absolutely. Many abusers, when they have access to firearms, will use them against.... Sometimes it starts with threatening the use and then eventually leads to lethal use of firearms.

It is required that anyone with any kind of charge of domestic violence has their firearms removed. However, we know that the process of removing those firearms from individuals is extremely hard. While a firearm license might be removed from an individual, it is harder to remove all access to all firearms, depending on what kind of community that individual is in.

Firearm licenses can also be suspended if an officer suspects that this is happening, but as we know, women are very rarely believed, so the idea in some cases is that working on something that is a suspicion may not be the first priority of law enforcement officers.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

You mentioned threats. Are firearms used as threats under coercive control in these situations?

[Anuradha Dugal]

Absolutely, they are. Firearms are used. Women are shown weapons. Weapons are pointed at them. Everybody knows where the firearm is in the house, and simply looking in that part of the home is a threat to a woman, because she knows exactly what that means.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Next, I would like to welcome Andréanne.

You have six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

Good morning, Ms. Jeshani and Ms. Dugal.

My first questions are for Ms. Walker and Ms. Alexander. I'm glad they have an opportunity to address the committee again.

I would also like to express my condolences to Ms. Irons. My thoughts go out to this mother who lost her daughter. I am the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl. I can't even imagine what it's like to lose your daughter, knowing that she was a victim of violence at the hands of her intimate partner. This is a very emotional topic.

Your comments were a little different from the ones you made this summer. Some things struck me during your testimony at the time. If I may, I'm going to go back to questions that I took the time to prepare during your opening remarks in the summer.

Ms. Alexander, in July, you said that non-disclosure orders issued by police forces were a way of silencing victims, of shutting them up.

I would like you to tell us more about that. What are the impacts of non-disclosure agreements?

[Cait Alexander]

Non-disclosure agreements are used to silence victims over and over again. You're forced and coerced into not telling your story. They're utilized in the family court, criminal court and civil court. There is a group called Can't Buy My Silence that is working to abolish this.

Section 278.1 of the Criminal Code is in relation to.... I'll compare it to the U.S. I can't safely live in this country, because my abuser is free.

In America, abusers cannot access the victim's health records, therapeutic records, medical records or otherwise, but in Canada, under section 278.1, abusers are allowed to subpoena those to court. That includes all of the aforementioned, but also journals, your personal journals.

I used to keep a journal. I still keep a journal every single day. Everything that I said about my ex can be utilized against me in court from my own private book. Those aren't the most comprehensive pieces of literature, but they would be weaponized against me in court if I ever had a criminal trial for my attempted murder. That would have been nice.

That is what's happening over and over again. Two of my friends, Tanya Couch and Alexa Barkley, are working on this issue on Survivor Safety Matters. We all know each other. We're all friends. Tanya actually stayed her own charges, because she did not feel comfortable having her own personal records utilized against her in court. She removed the charges. A perpetrator is free because she didn't feel comfortable. They weaponize it.

I was sexually assaulted for the first time when I was 13. The second time was when I was 16. The third time was when I was 17. I've been grabbed on the street here. I was nearly killed when I was 30. That's all in Canada. It hasn't happened anywhere else in this world, and I've lived in 10 different countries.

I've already been through the criminal justice system. It took eight years to prosecute. I remember my own personal records being weaponized against me. The defence counsel sits there, and they throw it at you. You are getting ripped apart on the stand, when you're just trying to tell the truth. They will manipulate. It's terrifying. NDAs are used to say, “You can't talk about this. You can only talk about that.”

I'm sorry. I'll try to keep this as short as possible.

It even happened to me for my attempted murder. When I got my lovely peace bond hearing, the Crown attorney said, “If you mention the other charges that have already been stayed, you might get cross-examined. You can talk only about the three times he hit you before he tried to kill you.” I told her to take a hike. “We're going to do this. Cross-examine me if you need to.”

The amount of strength it takes to have to shut down these authoritative figures when you're just trying to tell the truth.... It's repulsive. Everything needs to be amended in this justice system.

Thank you.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Since we're talking about justice reform, I want to ask you a quick question.

You are in contact with my colleague, the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, about the Jordan decision. It stipulates that, after a certain number of years, cases are dismissed due to an unreasonable delay.

I would like you to tell us how this important issue relates to the bill that has been introduced.

[Cait Alexander]

Jordan is what killed my case twice. I was never given a criminal trial against the individual who bludgeoned me nearly to death on July 31, 2021.

I held up those photos in this room. I know I'm not allowed to bring props, but I didn't care, because you needed to see them. I have my attempted murder on video. There are 40-plus photos on my phone. I can hold them up. There's a chronological report. The SWAT team, tactical team or whatever it is in Canada came to my house. There's body-cam footage of the scene of the crime. This country charged him but would not give me a criminal trial because of the time. I didn't want to be here anymore, because of the policies in this country. I cannot live safely in Canada. I live in Los Angeles. That's a lot of privilege. I have an amazing family. My parents are behind me right now. I do not have the average survivor's story. I have survivor's guilt. How am I alive, when my head was split open in three places? How did I send a two-word text message to the people who saved my life?

The Jordan rule is sickening. It's terrifying and so offensive. I had to leave a child in his care. It eats at me, because I will never get my day in court. A peace bond is simply not good enough for someone who is very clearly capable of killing someone. He will do it again. I told the Crown attorney, “When he kills someone, the blood is on your hands. It's not on mine.”

That is why I'm here today. This is so dangerous.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you, Ms. Alexander.

Bonita, you have six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I want to say to Cait Alexander that she is speaking for so many other women today who are so grateful she is able to share this for them.

My question will be for Megan Walker.

There are words like “prevention is the only cure” and “home is the most dangerous place”. I'm thinking about those two things together. I know you've been in this space for a very long time.

My questions are, what new forms of violence have you seen evolve, and can the federal government do anything to end, or at least address, current and past forms and what's been evolving?

[Megan Walker]

There are new forms of violence. Maybe they're not so new, but they've come to the forefront many times now. This is around women who are strangled. What has been reported to me consistently is that they are strangled into unconsciousness. Then the abuser allows them to come back to life. He does this over and over again.

Also, we don't talk enough about choking. Choking and strangulation are two separate issues. Women report being choked by men, again, into unconsciousness. Sometimes they are choked by the man's penis. He will thrust it into her throat so deeply that she's not able to breathe.

These are some of the situations women and girls endure. On top of them having to look around the corner everywhere, facing threats of femicide and trying to survive, women and girls now have to face—I believe it is very much related to pornography—the experience of horrific forms of strangulation and choking. The women and girls who report this also report that they will never recover from it.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Megan Walker, I've heard this from girls as young as 11, 12 and 13. They experience this harassment. There's a threat of having those activities done to them in their classrooms when they're at school. They're being shown this at school.

Could you share what you've heard about how this is evolving? I'm thinking about the next generation and those experiences. How is this happening? What can we do to educate people?

[Megan Walker]

When we live in a country where women do not have rights, where girls do not have rights, we can expect this to happen.

I've done a lot of work with young people in the schools and outside of the schools. I remember one time talking to a group of children. We separated the boys from the girls, and I asked the girls how many of them were dressed the way they were because that's how they wanted to dress. One hand went up, so I said, what are the reasons you're dressed like that? They explained that they brought a change of clothes to school because their parents wouldn't allow them to dress this way, but they dressed that way because they were deemed to be either invisible or, and I'm sorry to say this—this is their term—“fuckable”. Girls reported that they don't want to be invisible, so they will wear clothing and do whatever is required of them to satisfy boys—they don't want any boy to think they're invisible.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much for that testimony.

I'm going to ask witness Dugal something.

Thinking about prevention and those comments about how prevention is our only cure, I know that in British Columbia there is forensic nursing. I know a number of forensic nurses in British Columbia who are regularly intervening or have intervened around intimate partner violence and sex trafficking. I wonder if you could share what the areas are where health care could intervene in prevention and also in helping victims of abuse.

[Anuradha Dugal]

Health care has a responsibility to identify when there is someone in front of them who is experiencing the results of intimate partner violence. This could be a GP who is facing a woman who has anxiety or depression, asking the right questions about why the level of anxiety and depression is where it is, asking questions about what is going on at home, trying to find an answer. It could also be health care services in emergency rooms having protocols to understand the sorts of injuries they might be seeing and how they might be the result of intimate partner violence.

It is also important that health care workers understand a trauma-informed approach. They cannot ask questions in any way, and they need to understand the potential for revictimization and harming women more by asking questions or demanding answers at a time when women perhaps aren't ready or aren't able to explain what has happened. This is why health care services need to play a role in collecting evidence and making sure things are adequately recorded, so that when a victim is ready to do something, she can fall back on their information.

Finally, they need to have strong referral relationships. This is why it's so important that there is a wraparound protocol, that if a woman is coming, it's not just a case of somebody giving her a phone number when she leaves but making sure that somebody calls her afterwards and knows how to contact her.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

At this point, I would like to open the floor to Michelle Ferreri.

You have five minutes.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today.

This is probably one of the most upsetting committees and testimonies we've heard, and we've heard some pretty awful things.

We called an emergency meeting in the summer, and I'm so glad to see you guys back. The reason we called it was because since 2015, sexual assaults are up 75%, sexual violations against children are up 119%, forcible confinement or kidnapping is up 10%, indecent harassment is up 86.41%, non-consensual distribution of intimate images is up 801%, and trafficking in persons is up 84%. Intimate partner violence has been declared an epidemic in 94 Ontario municipalities. In Ontario, 30 women were killed in a 30-week window. Compared to 2014, intimate partner sexual assault was up 163%.

We had Detective Chief Milinovich from Peel Regional Police tell us during that meeting that a woman is strangled every single day in Peel Region. He said that of the percentage arrested by that unit, roughly half of them have already been released on bail since their arrest.

Ms. Walker and Cait, you guys have both told horrific stories of, in particular, Breanna Broadfoot, whose attacker was walking free when he shouldn't have been.

Cait, your abuser is free because of Jordan's rule, which is basically when a time period lapses, so apparently the crime doesn't matter—the crime against you doesn't matter.

Last week, a woman in Ottawa, in broad daylight, was stabbed and her throat slit in front of her children. Innocent bystanders had to hold her hand and tell her that her children were safe.

Bill C-75 was passed in 2019 under this Liberal government. In 2019 there were almost 215,000 total victims. By 2023 that number has increased to 251,000, or an increase of 17%. Clearly, this bill has made things worse. It has relaxed bail reform.

Ms. Walker and Ms. Alexander, this bill has allowed these perpetrators, these abusers, to walk free. Why would a victim or survivor report violence and abuse if they know nothing is going to be done?

Why would an abuser stop abusing if they know there are no consequences?

[Cait Alexander]

My abuser was allowed out on bail the next day for 500 bucks, so I was immediately terrified. I put my family at risk. He puts my family at risk. They're brave enough to still live here. I can't do it.

I've spent the last week in Toronto with my organization, End Violence Everywhere. We launched at the Canadian fashion awards on the 19th. We held a national rally with our non-profit, Voices Against Violence. On the 24th, the day the woman was stabbed in Ottawa, my family and I were at a gala that I chaired, where we raised $600,000 for Shelter Movers, which is another charity.

You're leaving this up to the non-profits when you don't listen, and we can't do it alone. It doesn't matter how much awareness and how much money we throw at things, if we don't have good legislation, we are going to die.

[Megan Walker]

That is the core of the issue.

The legislation is not appropriate as it's designed.

We need to recognize, first of all, that all women and girls are potential victims of violence and femicide for no other reason than the sex they were born. If we can't acknowledge that as we write legislation or even consider legislation, we're in trouble.

I'm telling you, everything you say today is accurate.

What do we want to do? We want to be part of the solution.

I envision having a core group of individuals, with the government at the table, making recommendations about how to change this.

I know I'm talking too long, but I just wanted to say one last thing about this.

This is not about provincial versus federal. This is about women. Women have to be at the core of the issue. I don't want to go back and forth, because it doesn't help. It doesn't help when I'm told that it's a provincial issue. It doesn't matter.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Exactly.

I have only 10 seconds left.

Would you like to see Bill C-75 scrapped, so that the people who are abusing these women are held in jail and not walking free?

[Cait Alexander]

Yes.

[Megan Walker]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Shelby Kramp-Neuman]

Thank you.

Next, I would like to welcome Sonia, who is joining us by video conference.

Thank you, Sonia.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for coming today and sharing your testimony. Cait said we all have to find a solution, and your testimony is very important in doing that.

My question is for Ms. Jeshani. You work at the Safe Centre of Peel, which is doing very good work for all women. I have a very important question for you.

In 2022, Peel police laid 531 intimate partner violence strangulation charges in Brampton and Mississauga. We know strangulation has many long-term health and psychological effects on victims.

Could you please tell us what your organization, the Safe Centre of Peel, is doing to support victims of strangulation?